Daniel Loeb (Reuters)
It’s payback time.
Billionaire hedge-fund activist Dan Loeb — whose dislike of fellow hedgie Bill Ackman goes back to a soured 2008 investment — stormed into the battle between Ackman and Herbalife by announcing yesterday that his Third Point fund has taken a 8.24 percent stake in the company.
The news, revealed in a regulatory filing, came just one day before the nutritional supplements company’s highly anticipated investor meeting this morning at the Midtown Four Seasons Hotel.
In what is expected to be a two- to three-hour affair, Herbalife boss Michael Johnson will lead a likely no-holds-barred rebuttal to Ackman’s Dec. 20 Herbalife takedown — when he called the 32-year-old company a pyramid scheme that regulators should shut down.
The attack caused Herbalife shares to tumble 40 percent.
When they recovered a bit after Christmas, Ackman was said to be scratching his head in disbelief.
Little did he know at the time that Loeb was making a $270 million bet against his $1 billion wager.
Loeb, in a letter to his investors, called Ackman’s accusations “preposterous.”
Loeb’s street cred — especially after his successful Yahoo! showdown — promises to make this a battle of hedge fund honchos as much as anything else.
Ackman — whose Pershing Square has shorted 20 million shares — said he welcomed the “additional sunlight” from Loeb.
In reality, there’s no love lost between Ackman and many big-name investors, who view him as a grandstander who is in over his head.
In hedge fund land, Loeb and Ackman are frenemies — cordial on the surface but with a good dose of bad blood that stems from Loeb’s losses in Ackman’s special Target fund, sources said.
Ackman isn’t on the good side of fellow activist investor Carl Icahn either, sources added.
Icahn is still smarting from a bitter legal battle Ackman won in 2011 after a real-estate deal between the two went bad.
Icahn is also believed to have taken a long position in Herbalife, sources said.
The possibility of Loeb and Icahn going up against Ackman’s Herbalife short sent investors into a tizzy.
“It’s going to be an Ackman sandwich,” one hedge fund manager wailed.
In a matchup, Loeb’s 16-year record outdoes Ackman’s — whose first fund, Gotham Partners, went under.
Last year, Pershing Square ended up 12.4 percent — but nearly half the gain came in December after his Herbalife short took off, a source told The Post.
News of Loeb’s stake in Herbalife sent the stock soaring yesterday morning in a frenzied day of trading.
Then, at 3 p.m., a report that the Securities and Exchange Commission was opening an inquiry into Herbalife caused a free fall that lasted for seven minutes.
Ackman had expected the SEC to move more quickly than the Federal Trade Commission, sources close to the activist said. The FTC up to this point has given Herbalife a pass.
The stock closed at $39.95, up 4.2 percent. It is now higher than when Ackman made his impassioned plea against the company, predicting that the stock would go to zero.